Why Does Portland Have So Many Strip Clubs?
Portland is known for strip clubs. Thank/blame the Oregon Supreme Court.
Why is Portland Like That? is a weekly Q&A column that answers your questions about the Rose City. If you want to ask a question, send me an email.
Kai asks: Why does Portland have so many strip clubs?
This question is pretty high up there on the Portland FAQ. When I was a tour guide I got asked about strip clubs constantly. Visitors from far-flung lands like Cedar Rapids or Canada were aghast at the proliferation of poledance parlors scattered throughout this particular municipality.
Also, when I wrote Storied and Scandalous Portland, Oregon, my editors at Globe Pequot Press more or less demanded that I talk about all the naked dancing places they’d heard so much about.
What follows is a lightly adapted passage from that book, which you should totally buy for the history-loving dad in your life. If you go to Powell’s, you can probably find a signed copy.
Sex work as most people think of it is still illegal in Oregon. It’s illegal to have sex with paying customers, and its illegal to purchase that kind of sex work.
However, one type of sex work is not only legal, it’s become one of the industries most identified with Portland: Strip Clubs.
The Oregon state constitution goes further than the federal constitution regarding freedom of speech. Where the federal constitution merely says that the government won’t abridge the freedom of speech, the Oregon state constitution goes further. Article one, section eight states “No law shall be passed restraining the free expression of opinion, or restricting the right to speak, write or print freely on any subject whatever.” That commitment to individual expression had unforeseen consequences for the state’s sex workers: In the late 1900s it allowed them a degree of latitude not seen in much of the rest of the U.S.
In the 1980s a case before the Oregon Supreme Court, State vs. Henry, changed how Oregon dealt with pornography, obscenity, and strip clubs. In 1982 Deschutes County District Judge Joseph J. Thanhofer issues a search warrant for a pornographic bookstore in Redmond Oregon. The shop’s owner, Earl Henry, was charged with distributing absence material that lacked “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” He was sentenced to sixty days in jail and had to pay a $2,000 fine.
The ACLU rode to Henry’s defense. They filed an appeal with the Oregon Supreme Court and argued that article one, section eight of the state’s founding document protected Henry from arrest and fine, even if what he was distributing was, in fact, obscene based on standards at the time. In 1987 the court ruled 7-0 that “any person can write, print, read, say, show or sell anything to a consenting adult even though that expression may be generally or universally considered obscene.” This decision would, indirectly, allow nude dancing to proliferate throughout Oregon. It wasn’t just stripping: It was free speech.
Within a year after Henry approximately fifty strip clubs were operating in Portland, and soon all-nude dancing was the norm.
In 2005 the Oregon Supreme Court re-affirmed Henry in City of Nyssa v. Miss Sally’s Gentlemen’s Club, this time explicitly applying Oregon’s constitutional protections to freedom of expression to what transpires on stage. This means that many of the rules and regulations that apply in other states do not apply in Oregon. Full nudity is, of course, allowed. Strip clubs can also serve alcohol, and unlike other states there’s no mandated distance that dancers have to keep from attendees. It is, after all, freedom of expression.
Counting and quantifying strip clubs is difficult, but Portland is often touted as the strip club capital of the United States. The city is home to many standard and sometimes dismal strip clubs, But, it’s also to establishments like the Acropolis, known just as much for its inexpensive steaks as for its dancers, and Casa Diablo, a vegan strip club whose menu is not only free of animal products, but also assures attendees that any leather or feathers they see on stage is synthetic rather than natural.
The oldest strip club in Portland, Mary’s is, perhaps fittingly, a former piano bar that was initially popular with sailors*. Courtney Love, years before she became a major figure in grunge, performed at the club, and an autographed picture of her now adorns its walls. The city also has a thriving burlesque scene, and only any given night of the week one can legally enjoy entertainment that would have driven past generations of anti-vice crusaders apoplectic with rage.
If you want a whole book of this kind of thing, Storied and Scandalous Portland, Oregon is available at Powell’s and other Portland bookstores.
*I wrote this in 2019. Mary’s has since changed locations and is no longer in the old piano bar location.
Do you have a question about Portland? Send me an email and I’ll try to get to it in a future column.